- Nigeria: Obi to run for president again after opposition split
Source: Reuters
“Nigerian politician Peter Obi said he would run for president again in January after winning his party’s nomination, setting up another contest between incumbent Bola Tinubu and a divided opposition. Obi was declared winner of the Nigeria Democratic Congress primary on Sunday, less than a month after quitting an alliance that had tried to set up a single opposition challenger. The acceptance from Obi — who came third in the last election after galvanizing young voters — hit hopes among some opposition backers that he might return to the coalition. It prepares the ground for a re-run of 2023’s three-way contest that is likely to test whether public anger over rising living costs and insecurity can translate into votes against Tinubu, or whether the anti-government vote will once again be split.” (06/01/26)
- Strategy Sells Bitcoin For First Time In Four Years
Source: Yahoo! Finance
“Strategy has sold some of its Bitcoin holdings. It marks the first time that the crypto treasury firm led by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor has sold any Bitcoin in four years. A regulatory disclosure shows that Strategy sold 32 Bitcoin over the past week for proceeds of $2.5 million U.S. The amount is small considering that Strategy owns more than 840,000 Bitcoin but is still significant as it suggests potentially larger sales in coming weeks and months. Strategy is under pressure to fund dividend payments on its high-yielding preferred stoc, which currently yields 11.5%. Already sinking, Bitcoin fell below $72,000 U.S. on news of Strategy’s sale.” (06/01/26)
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/strategy-sells-bitcoin-first-time-130500239.html
- UK: Disruptive passengers could be banned from all flights under regime plan
Source: Sky News [UK]
“Disruptive plane passengers could find themselves banned from flying by all airlines under a new UK government proposal. It is understood that a scheme for carriers to share information on unruly travellers is being developed by officials at the Department for Transport and the Home Office. The proposal, which is still at the concept stage, could lead to airlines being required to notify the government of a disruptive passenger. A participating airline could then be alerted when the same marked person checked in for a subsequent flight. It would then be up to that airline to determine how to respond, but they would have the option of refusing to carry them.” [editor’s note: Sounds like the kind of thing that could easily be done with zero government involvement … and therefore SHOULD be done that way if it’s done at all – TLK] (06/01/26)
- FL: Idiot pol files frivolous lawsuit vs. OpenAI
Source: NBC News
“Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Monday, accusing the company of putting profit over safety, fueling violence and pushing a product it knew could harm users. … The wide-ranging lawsuit accuses OpenAI of four counts of deceptive and unfair trade practices, two counts of negligence, two counts of violating product liability laws, and one count each of fraudulent misrepresentation and causing a public nuisance. The suit claims that OpenAI’s systems present a ‘great danger of addiction, cognitive decline, suicide, violence, and related harms’ to users.” (06/01/26)
- Hungary: Magyar threatens to amend constitution to oust president
Source: Politico
“Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar on Monday threatened to amend the country’s constitution to oust President Tamás Sulyok. Magyar said his government would attempt to use all available legal tools to remove Hungary’s head of state, an ally of former prime minister Viktor Orbán, and even change the country’s fundamental law to force his exit. ‘This process will take about a month, we are trying to adopt the necessary legislation as quickly as possible, and yes, there will be talk of removing all puppets,’ Magyar told reporters.” (06/01/26)
https://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-peter-magyar-amend-constitution-oust-president-tamas-sulyok/
- Trump Isn’t Just After Undocumented Immigrants — He Wants 100 Million Americans Purged, Too
Source: The UnPopulist
by David J Bier“The Supreme Court will soon rule in a case that will decide the future of birthright citizenship. The case has become more significant than ever because some officials are now openly advocating for ethnic cleansin — —mass removals of tens of millions of U.S.-born Americans based on their ancestry. In barely a year, the right has moved from the already controversial mass deportation of all undocumented immigrants to mass deportation of Americans. The 14th Amendment, drafted in part to prevent ethnic cleansing, should stop it. Whether it will is now up to the Supreme Court.” (06/01/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/trump-isnt-just-after-undocumented
- Trump’s Cotton Bailout Is Another Sign His Tariffs Aren’t Working
Source: Reason
by Tosin Akintola“On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the Great American Cotton Plan, a protectionist initiative to subsidize American cotton farmers. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says the plan is necessary to help domestic growers who are being ‘crushed by rising costs, unfair foreign competition, and a flood of cheap synthetic products.’ … Given the government’s penchant for propping up struggling sectors, it’s no surprise that the industry is receiving this bailout. But it’s not ‘unfair foreign competition’ or ‘trade distortions’ that are causing America’s cotton industry to falter. Over the past decade, 84 percent of domestically produced cotton has been exported on average, which suggests that trade is going well for farmers. Instead, it’s the president’s own policies.” (06/01/26)
https://reason.com/2026/06/01/trumps-cotton-bailout-is-another-sign-his-tariffs-arent-working/
- Financial Surveillance Is Expanding Before Our Eyes
Source: Cato Institute
by Nicholas Anthony“Most Americans have felt the pain of inflation in recent years. However, what they don’t often see is that inflation also erodes financial privacy. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) adjusts its penalties for inflation, but it does not adjust reporting thresholds. In the most egregious case, the $10,000 reporting threshold now used for currency transaction reports (CTRs) has not been changed since the number was first established in 1945 by an executive order. That’s equal to around $180,000 today. When the Bank Secrecy Act was ultimately passed in 1970, you could buy two new Corvettes for $10,000. Today, you could spend all of that on just the engine. In practice, that means the Bank Secrecy Act regime is swallowing up more transactions every year as inflation decreases the value of the dollar. No bills are passed; no regulations are open to the public. Yet, the wheel is turning, and financial surveillance increases without any checks or balances.” (06/01/26)
https://www.cato.org/blog/financial-surveillance-expanding-our-eyes
- Lists, Damn Lists, and Critical Correctness
Source: Quillette
by Dave Thompson“Love them or hate them, lists are now firmly established — along with cats and porn — among the apex predators of the modern internet.” (06/01/26)
- Who Should Set Prices?
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Walter Block“If you are in sync with meddlesome government bureaucrats, you probably believe that price gouging is profoundly evil. That charging higher prices than normal, especially during emergencies, is an economic abomination. That any seller who does this is taking advantage of people who are in precarious economic circumstances. When a storm hits, or a flood, or a tornado, heavy snow, ice, the closing of the Hormuz Strait, many of us will be without gas for our car, food, medical help, or other such necessities. Yet we face jacked-up prices to fulfill these needs. Just when we need them the most, these things are more expensive. To anyone who doesn’t understand basic economics, this seems outrageous and unfair. But to those who do understand supply and demand, it makes sense.” (06/01/26)
- The impending Republican collapse
Source: Washington Examiner
by Timothy P Carney“Republicans are on the verge of collapse, and it’s mostly President Donald Trump dragging them down. This may surprise the observer who just watched Trump knock off a handful of dissidents in Indiana’s Republican primaries and Sen. John Cornyn in Texas. But Trump is less popular with voters than he has ever been. Why? Part of the problem is standard mid-term woes, especially for a second-term president. Part of the problem is Trump’s ill-considered war in Iran and the subsequent increase in gas prices. Trump family self-enrichment probably pays a role, too. What does it mean for the GOP? It likely means a tsunami election in the 2026 midterm elections, with Democrats taking the U.S. House and gaining seats in the U.S. Senate while also winning state-level elections. … Republicans should also be worried about today’s bad vibes carrying over to 2028.” (06/01/26)
- It’s Ideology, Stupid
Source: Persuasion
by Matt Johnson“Why Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis is even more wrong today than it was in 1993.” (06/01/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/samuel-huntington-is-still-wrong
- Major problems where advanced technology holds real promise
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie“The common thread is that the hardest problems, those involving scale, complexity, or speed beyond human capacity, are exactly those where computation, AI, sensors, and biotech tend to have the most leverage.” (06/01/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/major-problems-where-advanced-technology-holds-real-promise
- Establishment Dems turn on Graham Platner, but it’s way too late
Source: Fox News Forum
by David Marcus“The world learned this week that Graham Platner, the Maine Democrat all but set to win his party’s Senate primary next month, has been sexting up to 12 women in the past few years while married. For Platner, this just added to his Cadillac Mountain of scandals. You are likely familiar with the fact that the so-called oyster farmer has a Nazi tattoo that he covered up only after lying about knowing its meaning. He also has a long history off-color Reddit posts, including remarks blaming women for being raped. What was most telling about these sordid new sexting revelations wasn’t that it exposed Platner as a creep. We already knew that. It was that the leak came from a fellow Democrat. The party may be starting to realize they have created a Marxist monster they can’t control.” (05/31/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/david-marcus-establishment-dems-turn-graham-platner-way-late
- Tom Steyer Assails “Trump’s Tax Loophole” — But It’s Just Prop. 13
Source: Independent Institute
by K Lloyd Billingsley“‘California’s ‘Trump Tax Loophole’ is a billionaire-friendly tax break that lets the wealthiest commercial property owners avoid paying taxes based on what their properties are actually worth,’ proclaims Tom Steyer, candidate for governor of California, on his website. Steyer has described this ‘loophole’ in debates as if it is a special benefit for corporations, a ‘corporate real estate tax loophole.’ In the gubernatorial debate on CNN, for example, he declared: ‘I will on the first day [in office] call a special election to close a corporate real estate tax loophole that’s worth over $20 billion. … California government needs more money.’ But Steyer’s website admits: The ‘loophole’ is actually Proposition 13, the popular constitutional amendment that protects ordinary homeowners across the Golden State.” (06/01/26)
- DOJ’s anti-weaponization fund has precedent and purpose
Source: New York Post
by Miranda Devine“The rollout of the DOJ’s ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ may have been botched, but the fund remains a good idea, and the hysteria from Democrats like the hypocritical Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and allied media is absurd. It’s not unprecedented or corrupt or President Trump’s personal ‘slush fund,’ no matter how loudly they shriek. It’s just a rebranding of an existing legal settlement fund Congress authorized decades ago, as Washington lawyer and veteran Senate oversight investigator Jason Foster points out. Administrations of both parties have repeatedly used the DOJ’s Judgment Fund to settle legal claims against the federal government, and Democratic administrations have used it for far more questionable payouts than the Trump administration’s proposal to compensate genuine victims of lawfare.” (05/31/26)
- Tyranny or Revolution
Source: The Chris Hedges Report
by Chris Hedges“Liberalism, which Rosa Luxemburg called by its more appropriate name — ‘opportunism’ — is an integral component of capitalism. Liberalism ameliorates capitalism’s excesses. But capitalism, Luxemburg argued, is an enemy that can never be appeased. Liberal reforms blunt resistance, but later, when things grow quiet, are revoked. The last century of labor struggles in the United States provides a case study of Luxemburg’s observation.” (06/01/26)
- We were going to bury 20 tons of nuclear fuel. Finally, we have a way to use it instead.
Source: The Hill
by Guido Núñez-Mujica“For most of this century, the U.S. has run roughly one-fifth of its electricity on fuel it must import. Russia has long been the single largest foreign supplier of enriched uranium to U.S. nuclear plants. Remarkably, it still held that position as recently as last year, providing 20 percent of the enriched uranium in America’s commercial reactors even after a U.S. import ban became law. We have spent years scrambling to unwind that dependence — a chokepoint that constrains today’s reactors and the pending advanced ones. And this month, the Department of Energy took a step toward loosening that chokepoint. … The real choice is not between a risky program and a safe, free status quo. It is between spending $20 billion to bury energy-dense material, or having private companies pay to turn that same material into electricity.” (06/01/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/5899786-plutonium-fuel-advanced-reactors/
- Endings and Beginnings: About That Arc of the Moral Universe
Source: TomDispatch
by Rebecca Gordon“This is my last article for TomDispatch. For over a decade, Tom Engelhardt has given me a platform to write about pretty much anything that grabs my — I’ll admit it, easily attracted — attention. It’s been a wonderful partnership for me, offering not just a place to publish, but a chance to think, talk, and often argue with the best editor I’ve ever worked with. A rarity in the age of Internet insta-publishing, TomDispatch subjects every article to the scrutiny of three separate proofreaders. Not for Tom the misplaced apostrophe or the confusion between ‘their’ and ‘they’re.’ Unlike the New York Times in a May 12, 2026 headline, no article appearing in TomDispatch would ever go rogue and ask the question, ‘Did the Fifth Circuit Go Rouge With Its Abortion Pills Ruling?'” (05/31/26)
https://tomdispatch.com/about-that-arc-of-the-moral-universe/
- The Federal Reserve is Why the People are Unhappy
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
by Ron Paul“With inflation rising more than incomes, many Americans have suffered a loss of purchasing power even though their nominal income increased. The erosion of Americans’ purchasing power has led to a debt-based economy. This has created a number of bubbles that likely will soon burst. According to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by economist Mike Shedlock, total car, credit card, and student loan debts are now higher, measured in real dollars, than nearly 20 years ago during the Great Recession. Of course, the greatest debtor is the US government. The Federal Reserve’s practice of buying government debt in order to pump more money into the economy enables maintaining the largest government in history.” (06/01/26)
http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/the-federal-reserve-is-why-the-people-are-unhappy
- Fast Food Going Down: What We Learned From the April Consumer Data
Source: CounterPunch
by Dean Baker“When the Commerce Department released April data on consumption, the uptick in reported inflation got most of the attention. While that is big news, there were several other items that were noteworthy. First, consumption growth was very weak in April, increasing by just 0.1%. That is not necessarily a big deal since it followed two months of rapid growth, and the falloff was mostly attributable to a drop in car purchases after two months of large purchases. Still, consumption is most of the economy, and if it’s not growing at a decent pace, the economy is not growing at a decent pace. The second point is that fast-food spending is in the doldrums.” (06/01/26)
- Reason Roundtable, 06/01/26
Source: Reason
“Why Socialism Won’t Deliver Government Efficiency.” (06/01/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/06/01/why-socialism-wont-deliver-government-efficiency/
- The Kyle Anzalone Show, 06/01/26
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Trump Continues to Test Limits of Iran Ceasefire, How Will Tehran Respond?” (06/01/26)
- Get Lit With Matt and Brad, episode 1
Source: Racket News
“A new all-books, all-the-time show.” (06/01/26)
https://rumble.com/v7aofh2-episode-one-of-get-lit-with-matt-and-brad..html
- Rising, 06/01/26
Source: The Hill
“Robby Soave gives his radar on Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner getting implicated in another controversy, after reports broke that he exchanged sexually explicit text messages with women outside his marriage.” (06/01/26)